The Rise of the Pitt
by izamud2
Summary: The story of the rise of Ishmael Ashur as Lord of the Pitt in his own words. Chronicles events like the Scourge, and his survival out of the ashes of the Pitt to become its Lord and master. Please do leave reviews and tell me how you like the story, don't be shy
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Call me Ishmael

Dear Marie,

By the time that you listen to this, you are probably already grown up. Hopefully the people have been cured by then. Hopefully they know that you are their savior. Hopefully this city isn't named the Pitt anymore, and that awful, godforsaken place is only but a distant memory of a hellish nightmare that once stood upon the hidden shadows of the mind.

Now, these letters should explain who I am. I am your father. I am Ashur, Lord of the Pitt. But I'm also your father. So call me Ishmael.

I once was in the Brotherhood of Steel. They are an organization that focuses on gathering technology to preserve it from destruction and decay, and also to keep it from destroying the world. I used to live with them once upon a time out west.

We had a mission. Our mission was to secure technology from the old capital of the pre-war United States, Washington D.C.

Before reaching that place, we were to contact the Brotherhood branch near Chicago. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful, and we lost a lot of troops in trying to reach them. Our leader, Elder Owyn Lyons, decided to move on to our mission, which was to reach the Capital Wasteland, Washington D.C.

Before we were to arrive, we fatefully passed near a city called the Pitt. I had never seen such a hellish place before. There was a bridge extending from the train yard to the city itself, and the bridge was filled with wildmen and trogs, and if that wasn't enough, there were raiders everywhere. Our leader, Elder Lyons, feared that we might not make it to our destiny, so he took the decision that we should take the city, guns ablaze, and raze it to the ground as swift and brutal as possible. That resulted in an event known as the Scourge, an event too traumatic for me to speak about right now. In time, I hope to share with you all my stories.

Of course, I never arrived.

I was left behind here in the Pitt, to forge a life for myself, to build something, and to rise out of the ashes trapped in an abominable dark pit, so that others could see the end of the light in sight.

* * *

It gets way more interesting, friends, read on!


	2. Chapter 2: Sympathy for the Devil

Chapter 2: Sympathy for the Devil

Now, off the record, I guess I should ask myself, who am I?

I am Ishmael Ashur, son of Abraham Ashur. Brother of Isaac Ashur. All of my family members were part of the Brotherhood of Steel.

But like the biblical story of Ishmael and Isaac we were not to be together. During the scourge we fought and fought the locals. They resisted with all their might, yet they managed to kill no Brotherhood paladins. All but one. I died that day.

No longer am I a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin! I have shed that pathetic title, that scourge that weighed down on me. Out of the ashes rose Ishmael!

I was cast out into the world. That explosion in the steel mills of the Pitt freed me from my destiny with the Brotherhood.

Abraham and the Brotherhood of Steel were my fathers! I followed them and their stupid ideals of steel and technology. Deep down I wanted to save lives, and I believed that rescuing technology was the way to do that! But how wrong was I. The ideology and arrogant pomp of the Brotherhood shielded me from the real world. In the real world dogs eat dogs.

The real world is unforgiving. It doesn't wait for you. There is no prodigal son to return to the warm, comfortable, cozy home. The prodigal son dies in this world, or he becomes something else.

Abraham, representing Elder Lyons, and my real father, chose Isaac, which were my fellow Paladins, and my real brother. The Brotherhood cast me out, like Abraham did with Hagar and Ishmael.

I, Ishmael, was cast out into the desert, left to die! No one bothered to look for poor old Ishmael. If he's alive, he won't even last a day. But Ishmael lives! Between mouthfuls of sand and breaths full of determination and fear, I held on!

Lying on the dirt beneath the mill, representative of a bottomless pit where the Devil's lair is present laid Ashur. Someone came to visit poor old Ashur. He told me to wake up. He told me to wake up, that I had things to do. He told me it wasn't my time yet. I asked the voice why it came to me, why didn't it leave me to die in this pit! The voice told me not to be a fool.

I woke up to raiders trying to steal my power armor. I killed them. I took my laser rifle, and shot both of the raider's heads off. But soon enough more raiders surrounded me, demanded that I hand over my power armor, and my laser rifle. They beat me with my rifle, and locked me in a room below the mill, where I could hear the trogs outside howling for food like mad men seeking food, starving and willing to eat even the largest of the steel ingots lying in the steelyard!

But I was a changed man. I knew that I was supposed to die that night. But I didn't. That night, during my half-starved, half beaten to death night, I fell into a deep sleep far into the cold night. My savior came to me in a dream.

He wore a shining white suit. He had sparkling white teeth, something I had never seen in my many years of living in the Wasteland of America. Not even Brotherhood members had teeth as white. He had shining bright white eyes with blue iris. I don't even know how I knew this, since the sight of his eyes emitted a glare that made my head throb in pain.

He walked towards me in his spanking shiny new shoes, his white, clean skin reflecting the shining sun that popped out in between toxic filled clouds in the atmosphere. He took a pair of sunglasses, and put them over his eyes, all while smiling at me, without blinking.

"Are you an angel" I asked.

_No._ He shot me a wry smile.

"Then who are you?"

_Why do you want to know? _ He looked at me, with a pensive expression in his face.

"I just do."

_Hmm._

"Are you sure you're not an angel?"

_Angels wouldn't survive in the Pitt._

"Then who are you?"

_I'm but a man of wealth and taste._

"Why did you save me?"

_What's really bothering you is the nature of my game. _

He winked at me.

At that moment I woke up.


	3. Chapter 3: The Scourge, Part I

Chapter 3: The Scourge, Part I

Dear Marie,

If you are still listening this, it must mean that I'm either dead, or I wasn't able to convince you otherwise from seeking the truth of where your father comes from, and what he did to leave his mark upon this world. Perhaps after you listen to this holotape, you'll never want to associate yourself with me ever again.

The Scourge was a terrible and cruel thing, even for a place as terrible and unforgiving as the Wasteland. Ahh, but let me not get ahead of myself.

Back when I was with the Brotherhood of Steel, we decided that we needed to leave for Washington D.C. in the east coast, in order to recover vital technology, a super weapon built by the pre-War government before the war. Of course, I, along with others, weren't told what the weapon was.

My father, Abraham, was a scribe in the Brotherhood, and he was also fanatically loyal, the fool. My brother Isaac was a Paladin, and we were all under the command of Head Paladin Owyn Lyons. We were composed of a small squad of Paladins, surrounded by a large core of initiates, such as myself.

Initiate Ishmael Ashur! To think that I ever swallowed any of that repulsive ideology makes me shudder.

But anyway, we initiates were a mixture of young men, sons and daughters of scribes or Paladins. Recruits were also in our group. The Brotherhood, back in that time, took some of the locals in as an experiment to see whether locals were worthy of being part of a grand organization that was the Brotherhood of Steel. The Paladins had the latest weapons, including power armor, laser rifles, and plasma pistols. The initiates had a bunch of assault rifles, shotguns, and only a lucky few like myself carried Power Armor.

I wielded a shotgun and a laser rifle.

In our road east, we encountered countless villages and towns, and the occasional shithole raider outpost. Town after town of pissant wastelanders gazed at our armor with curiosity, and the occasional dumbass raider would try to rob us, just to get his head blown off.

Finally, we neared Chicago, a place where the Brotherhood of Steel had an outpost. But instead we found an irradiated river. It was patrolled by some sort of military. Paladin Owyn Lyons told us to retreat and proceed to our original mission east. As we proceeded to leave, snipers out of everywhere appeared.

They took out initiate after initiate, so easily that the Brotherhood of Steel vowed never to accept recruits again. I, however, along with another initiate, survived. Owyn Lyons then decided to promote me to Paladin, and I received a full suit of new T-45 Power Armor, rather than the outdated T-33 armor I was wearing. We proceeded east. And then we encountered the Pitt.

There were three dark green rivers. The last remaining initiate decided to take a drink from the river, and as soon as he put his hand into the river, it was burned to ash. He then turned into a ghoul, and we quickly put him down.

We followed the river to a bridge full of destroyed cars and debris. There were men there, scary enough to give nightmares for days with their countless tattoos, dirt on their faces, and menacing rifles they yielded. There was a group of feral dogs living out of one of the cars. There was a sign at the top that read "The Pitt". There were countless scrawlings in red spray paint that said "Leave!" in menacing, blood-like letters that send a chill down the spine of even the most fierce Paladin.

Head Paladin Lyons motioned to one of our snipers, and she picked off the three men rather quickly. The air in the area was filled with gunshots, so no one was even hardly moved by the loud noise three gunshots emitted, as they simply joined into the air already filled by countless other gunshots emitted routinely by the inhabitants.

We carefully crossed the bridge, looking to avoid all of the booby traps put in place by the habitants. There were a couple of rabid dogs living in the bridge. They look so hungry and underfed, that they charged us despite the fact that there were more of us. Several of our paladins with super sledges quickly took care of them.

When we crossed the bridge, near the entrance, there were several raiders, with Mohawks and leather armor laughing, as they had cornered a woman. She looked as if she was in her twenties, and she wore rags. The men were grabbing her, and were groping her all underneath her robe. She screamed and screamed to the top of her lungs, while the raiders laughed. Her exposed legs allowed the cold drafts of air to enter into the inside of her dress, as the raider's hands did the same. Elder Lyons commanded us to spread out, and we did, in formation, aiming our weapons at the raiders.

Head Paladin Lyons approached the raiders, laser rifle in hand. The raiders were raping the young women, and didn't even look up.

Lyons fired a warning shot, and then the raiders looked up.

"You've got to fuckin' be kidding me!" one of them yelled.

Lyons then told them to surrender.

The raiders then got up from the floor and dashed for their weapons. The woman quickly ran from the raiders, and hid behind a burned out pre-War vehicle that lay as debris next to the entrance.

"I want this one's head on a fuckin' platter!" yelled one of the raiders, pointing at Lyons.

The paladins and I too, fired their weapons at the raiders. I emptied my shotgun at the raider closest to the woman. They were completely annihilated, with their lifeless bodies looking as fierce and evil as they had been in life.

Lyons then coolly walked up to the woman. Her sobbing was the only thing heard in the entire place, as it had seemingly quieted down with the death of those raiders. She refused to take Lyons's hand, instead getting up by herself. Lyons asked the woman for her name. She simply said Midea, and she hurried away. But as she left, she stared at me the whole time…


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Scourge: Part II

I still remember vividely the events of the Scourge. I don't quite remember names, but I remember every single detail.

"We should go, this isn't how we operate. We are only after technology."

I remember some Paladin saying this to Head Paladin Lyons.

Lyons answered that we were going to take the city whether he liked it or not.

When the Paladin protested, I remember Lyons saying the following:

"That sounds like mutiny. Know that I'll have your head for that if you insist"

The paladin kept quiet, and we advanced.

While one of our men worked on opening the chain-link door, we got into formation with our guns aimed, me and my shotgun included. When the doors opened, we moved inside in formations of 4 men teams.

We encountered chaos.

The men were a bunch of rapists, murderers, and thugs. The women were merely victims of these men, getting gang raped, or were also murdering and doing some raping of their own. On the street there was three ropes upon a wooden surface, where three bodies were still hanging, one of a child, and two men. Two armed raiders were dragging a man, kicking and screaming, while a third was picking his Brahmin clean of a bunch of goods, such as ammo, and food.

To our right were some quarters where habitants were living. There were men beating some women, but when they saw us, they stopped. The women looked at us. Something was wrong. Their face was peeling!

They were turning into ghouls! The men, the women, everyone.

We fired upon the raiders dragging the man. Shots rained down upon the raiders and even the man being dragged away. They laid dead in the corner of a 4 story building, where a walkway stood above. We killed the Brahmin too, and the man looting it.

Men from the walkways started shooting at us, so we all quickly ran for cover. Some of the men from the residences grabbed weapons and started pointing them at us, so we put them down, like rabid dogs.

One of the paladins threw a grenade at the walkway, blowing the raider sniper into three. Soon all firing ceased.

We commanded all of the men, women, and children to stand against the wall, in front of a sign spray painted on the wall that pointed towards the direction of "the Mill".

Several paladins stood in front of them, guarding them with laser rifles in hand. One of them went up to Lyons and asked what to do next. Lyons whispered into his ear.

Afterwards, the paladin grabbed several children that were standing against the wall. He told the rest of us that the children were coming with us. Then he motioned to the 7 paladins. He then said that these people were to be executed, because they were mutating into ghouls.

There laid 20 something bodies on the floor. Men. Women. Children.

Several of the faces were of depraved men, who deserved to die. Some of these dead women seemed like they also deserved to die. But some of them had fear in their face, as did the children whose bodies lay in a pile on the ground, now a corpse to be eaten by rodents and crows, which had somehow survived the atomic apocalypse unscathed.

We moved on towards the area marked "the Mill".

We blew open the door. There were men there, smoking cigarettes, taking turns at shooting a dead body hung upside down.

There were no questions asked this time. All of the raiders promptly received a bullet to the head, while their bodies leaked dark red, almost black fluid, probably from all of the drugs these men had used to withstand living in such a hellish place as the Pitt.

At that moment, men burst open the door from a door marked "Uptown", and one of the men tossed a grenade at us. Several paladins jumped out of the way. I barely began to run, when an explosion knocked me into a whole carved into the floor of the Mill, where I fell, and landed hard on my back. I remembered looking up to see a chain link guard rail standing around the hole I had just fallen through in the Mill. Several men looked down at me. I faintly looked at them, until everything went black and I fell unconscious.

That, Marie, is how I ended up here in the Pitt.


	5. Chapter 5: The Devil's Lair

Chapter 5: The Devil's Lair

No longer was I a paladin. I was simply me, Ishmael Ashur!

I stood locked up beneath the Mill, in darkness that engulfs even the brightest of lights inside the most virtuous souls. My captors hadn't killed me.

Such fools! If they had been able to see the future inside a crystal ball, they'd have killed me, and strewn out my insides all over the Pitt for the world to see! But in this world, if you can see where you went wrong in your past actions, it means that you'll soon be dead. The wasteland punishes errors with a painful death.

My captors were amazed at the Brotherhoods fighting ability, which is why they had spared me.

Locked I was in a dark room with little light trickling in, the little toxic sunrays entering proved to be but little daggers upon my eyes. Once in a while, the door would open, revealing a dark shadow throwing a plate of slop to me.

The food smelled repulsive. I resisted and resisted until I could no more, and my stomach and I were battling for control of my brain and my sanity. I would always lose the battle, and I'd end up eating that shit. Every single bite I took felt like dying. I'd eat the shit, lie down, and then doze off. In my dreams, I'd be dying all the time, consumed from the inside by the slop, acting like an agent of the devil trying to steal my soul, through the violent bowel movements in my stomach, culminating in my waking up, rushing to the bucket to release the nasty excrement of a meal through my mouth, or through violent dysentery.

"I'm going to die here!" I thought to myself.

But I'm already dead. You can only die once. Yet here I feel like I die every minute, with every irradiated breath I take in this mill, every gunshot that rings out on the outside by wildmen makes me wish my torso was the destination, and every growl emitted by the trogs making my hairs on my neck stand up like toddlers learning to walk for the first time.

But it wasn't fear. Fear is what I, Ishmael, was before I fell down the Devil's Lair. Fear was being in the Brotherhood, afraid that my father or my brother would abandon me. Fear was falling down the pit at the mill, every thought racing in my head as I fell through the hole thinking about being abandoned in the desert that is the Pitt, just as Hagar had been abandoned thousands of years before in the desert, with no knowledge or courage of what to do next.

Hatred is what drives me! Hatred is what allowed this place to grow! A mill survived the Great War to end all wars!

When the bombs fell, it killed all of the weak people. From concrete, the mutated flowers of the Pitt, rose, despite the fact that the sun never shines on the Pitt, nor does it rain, nor do populations grow nor thrive!

Despite the massacre the Brotherhood and I inflicted upon the Pitt, I could still hear its rustle and bustle as people continued to hurt and kill each other, as if all the citizens of the Pitt had been born with a Mark of hatred, binding them to hate each other, generation after generation.

One night, or was it day? I couldn't tell, since I had been locked up for a long time inside this room. Anyway, one day a shadow opened the door. He instructed me to put a collar on my neck, which had a small red light that illuminated the otherwise dark room.

I obeyed.

"Get up, slave!" He yelled at me, as he poked me with bat, through to my ribs, which only had a thin cloth over them, exposed from the lack of food or shelter, since that room allowed in all of the cold breeze from that even colder place.

"Slave". I hate that word. I hate its meaning. I hate it!

To me, the word "slave" is like a person hanging off a cliff, holding on to a small thread, knowing that the next moment you will be falling off the ravine. The word implies that there is no hope for you to change your situation.

As stupid as hope is, it is necessary. Hope is the foolish thought that a man can survive the Pitt intact, with his soul still belonging to him, while maintaining his integrity. Hope is the stupid thought that one can eat slop for the rest of his life, and maintain the strength and illusion to gather all the ingots from the steelyard, and bring a stable and happy future to the Pitt.

But I am a hopeful fool. I believe in hope. I am as stupid as the man hoping to find a cure to his ghoulification by eating some poison that will kill him instead of save him. But foolish or not, men need it. And being called a slave is like taking away something that is necessary for the survival of men, to the same importance of food, water, or a shelter.

And right then and there I decided that I hated this man.

He said to me, "Now you will fight for your food, slave."


	6. Chapter 6: Fight!

Chapter 6: Fight!

In the bloodied floors of the arena stood me, Ishmael.

There I was, with no armor, no rifles or pistols. I had nothing but a rusty old machete, and some rags for armor. In front of me was a tall, built man, and I paled in comparison to his large size and strength.

What will I do?! What do I do if he starts charging towards me, do I run? Do I hide? Do I scream in agonizing fear, fearful that he'll rip my arms apart with a whim, while he laughs at me, and gets rewarded with a tasty Brahmin steak, while my severed head observes from the sidewalk, being laughed at and kicked at by raiders?

The man laughed at me.

"ha ha ha! You will be trog food tonight!"

Of course, outwardly, I showed no fear. My face didn't shift in emotions, not even a bit. I looked determined like a man intent on committing suicide, yet inside, I felt like the slightest touch could make me jump up and run like a coward.

Why am I a coward?! Why am I afraid of a single man? After all, isn't it better to die like this, fighting, rather than survive in a shithole like the Pitt?

I had killed a man before. I had held a rifle in my hands, when I was in the Brotherhood. I had aimed it at a skull, and pulled the trigger without flinching, like a simulation in the pods back at base. The body had fallen, yet I had barely noticed. His body had fallen like a rag falls after a large gust of wind, as if it would have fallen regardless of my actions. I had aimed at heads before, and never before had I realized that behind some raider helmet, or some leather mask stood a person, who had once been a child, and had wild, wacky dreams of exploring the wasteland, without the knowledge of knowing the cruelty and evil present in the wasteland.

If I won this fight, it would be the first time I'd kill someone while staring at him in the eyes, his warm, thick blood oozing down my arm, a sign of his livelihood slipping out of his body.

The man lunged at me. I flinched. I jumped backwards as hard as I could, and the machete cut cleanly through my rags. The place was completely dark, except for the middle of the arena, which was lit up by unknown, mysterious lights shining down on us. There were shouts from above, cheering for one or the other, probably making bets.

The man swung and swung his machete towards me, in a menacing form, threatening to take off my head in one swing. I kept moving and moving backwards, until it seemed that I was running away from the man, rather than trying to dodge his shots at me.

The raiders above couldn't stop laughing!

"You're dead, fucker!" someone yelled from above.

At that moment, I stared upwards slowly, while I stumbled around fatigued. Then the man kicked me square in the ribs. I fell down. He kicked me and kicked, and then, when I was completely on the floor, he kicked my head so hard, that I began to hear ringing in my ears. He laughed and laughed, and all I could do was hold arms to my head, until the objects within my vision began to sway back and forth.

"Wernher, drag this one out to the steelyard, this dead fucker is trog meat!"

Werhner. Werhner. Werhner.

I can't get that name out of my head.

As my thoughts get more and more unclear, the ringing in my head manages to understand the word, "Werhner".

Werhner doesn't even look at me, or my face to see who I am. He and another man grab me by the legs and start dragging me across the floor. My arms stop resisting, and slowly move away from my head, and begin to get dragged like the rest of my body. My eyes have an overwhelming urge to shut themselves tight. I faintly see a sign that says "Steelyard". As I pass out, I faintly feel the wind brushing beside my body, as a door is slammed shut behind me, and I close my eyes.


	7. Chapter 7: Phoenix Rising

Chapter 7: A Phoenix Rising

I can see a towering figure over my head.

"You."

The figure sways mockingly over me, taunting me. His white suit seems almost black with the toxic sunrays filtering through, sweeping like a pair of hands asphyxiating me with every breath.

"Enjoying your sleep?" he asked.

"I want to die"

He laughed at me.

"So much darkness, make it stop!" I pleaded.

He snapped his fingers, and the weather suddenly changed. The sun shone. The wind turned a clear sky blue, and the destroyed buildings suddenly stood as they had in their splendor in the 20th century.

I got up.

"Am I dreaming?" I asked.

The man nodded.

We walked side to side through bustling streets, towards a bridge. 1950's vehicles were everywhere. There were red ones, blue ones, green ones, rather than the same old rust colored carcasses of vehicles I had only ever known in my existence. The bridge was splendorous! It was red, with the steel strings sustaining it littered with birds perched on it, singing some long lost tune from some happy time back in the past.

People walked on by, ignoring the sight of us, never bumping into us despite the traffic jam of people on the walkways on the sidewalk of the pavement. People kept talking about purchasing a car, of their significant others, and other trivial things.

As I walked forward with the man in white, I looked down at my feet. I had black leather shoes; clean, without a stain of blood or dirt so common in my life. I looked up, and the chilling sign atop the bridge that usually read "The Pitt" in blood red letters simply read Pittsburgh, and had another sign pointing away the distance of said place.

We walked to a place that was bustling. In it, it had a black sign that read "Bar".

It was surrounded by other buildings, some tall, made up completely of glass, with figures moving about in the floors above. There too were restaurants and Cafe's, with loads of people coming and going from them, going in with money in their hands, and coming out with a bag of food and a coffee. There too were diners, lined with red chairs and a long counter, made of mahogany, where teenagers and adults alike gathered to buy homemade-like food, while chatting with each other.

I had longed to walk into a diner or at least into the tall glass structure where the industrious looking people were, but instead, I went into the lonely, dark bar with the man in the white suit.

In it was a dimly lit room, surrounded by a pool table with absolutely no people around it, and no balls or pool sticks. Next to it was a dartboard, with no darts in sight. Immediately to the right was a counter, with a lone man behind it, a vast array of alcohol behind him. His face was hidden by the shadows, and the man in the white suit and I sat on stools.

The man ordered a whiskey. I ordered some rum. I received a glass, and as I sniffed the sweet smell I told myself that this couldn't be real.

Reading my mind, the man said that I was right, it wasn't.

"You are the devil, aren't you?"

The man smiled. I frowned.

"You bring evil to the world. You destroy things. You steal men's souls."

He took a sip from his drink, and chuckled.

"I bring order to the world.

Look around you. There are tall buildings everywhere, made of glass. There are bridges, complex structures. Look at the people smiling around you, talking about their work, their loved ones, or other trivial things. They walk around, ignorant of how big the cost was to build the world they know and enjoy, at the cost of thousands of men.

They are ignorant of how much pain it cost to build their world. They don't know how much pain it took for people to wither away their lives in hours and hours of wage labor and slavery in building bridges and structures under the guise of brutal dictators, presidents, and cruel foremen all doing my will of building progress through order.

Funny how men destroyed thousands of years of progress in five minutes!

Now I come to you to do my will.

Undoubtedly, not very many people see potential in the Pitt.

It is even more unquestionable that no one saw potential in a world where stone rained, and man was the weakest of the animals in the food chain.

The Pitt is an unfathomable hell hole, unrecognizable to the splendor that the city of Pittsburg once was. In there lies the ashes of the city. There lie the skeletons of a city.

A person sees death, and desolation. But there is a new world to be built.

On the back of the suffering of thousands lies the road to progress. Inevitably, the roads composed of burning concrete will be poured on top of the decaying bodies of those who labored tediously under the sun under the hand of a brutal leader commanding their labor."

As I pondered on this, I took the glass to my mouth, and I spilled it all over my face.

* * *

I awoke to a woman pouring water over my face over the hellish area known as "The Steelyard".


	8. Chapter 8: The Steelyard

Chapter 8: The Steelyard

The girl whispered into my ear to wake up, as the cool, crisp watery texture splashed all over my face, bringing me back into the real world, the hell of the steelyard.

"Run!" She shouted.

Trog groans soon filled the air of the steelyard.

I ran after her, but soon I saw three trogs pounce on her. She yelled at me for help, but I stood immobile. The trogs ripped her left arm right off of her body, as she screamed, and thick tears rolled out of her eyes. The other trogs soon joined her maimed body, and one took a bite of her stomach, while she screamed and howled like an animal hit by a vehicle, agonizing in pain.

I ran, but soon I turned and turned, without the knowledge of what to do next, or even of where to go. The fear of the trogs had rendered the pain in my torso non-existant, and I soon grew dizzy in trying to figure out what to do next. Then, I saw a small room. I ran to it, and closed the door. I quietly shut it, and through the opaque window, I saw several trogs wandering around the steelyard, several atop the defunct trains, and atop one of the now defunct factories towering over the steelyard.

I sat down.

I felt my hand over a flashlight, and turned it on. Out came a dim light, which I thought to myself as being good, so that that way the trogs wouldn't see me. There was a computer on the desk in the room, and there was a steel rod smashed inside the monitor. On top, there was a first aid kit, and inside it were several stimpaks, med-x, and jet. On the floor next to the desk laid a skeleton, clutching a .32 pistol in his hand. I quickly grabbed the gun, and opened the cylinder, to find five of the six chambers occupied with .32 bullets. The man had committed suicide.

Should I put a bullet through my head? It would surely save me the pain of getting ripped apart by the trogs! If the first one didn't kill me, I'd have 4 left to do the job.

Surely I was delusional! Only I could see men in white suits, taking me for a stroll in 20th century Pittsburgh! Perhaps by the end of the week I'd lose it, succumbing to the pain and torture it is to survive in the Pitt! Perhaps I had lost my nerve!

But as I brought the gun to my head, I couldn't pull the trigger. My finger was incapable of pulling the lever. There was a thought in the back of my head, itching like a bad case of dandruff. I shook and shook my head, but the thought grew bigger. What if the dream had been real? What if there was a chance of clawing out of here!

I sighed in desperation, pulled back the hammer in the pistol, and placed my hand in the door knob.

As I pushed the door open, all the trogs feeding on the girl that had saved me turned around to look at me. I ran, clutching the gun in my hand. The trogs followed. I ran straight to the dumpsters, where I climbed up. From there, I jumped upon a red factories' roof, while the trogs below me growled and growled, and I threw a steel ingot on the head of one, killing it.

I counted to three. After a long exhalation, I jumped from the roof, using the loud noise of knocking over several ingots of the opposite side of the factory as distraction.

I ran, and in the distance, I saw a steel walkway. As I approached the walkway at full speed, one of the trogs that had been standing on top of the defunct train rushed towards me, and as he jumped I placed a bullet in between its eyes, its human-like face expressing a fit of rage, angry at its condition, but accepting of its savagery.

I finally stood atop a steel walkway overlooking the mill, with the view of the steelyard and the mill, and the trainyard, where trogs reined, and pain was the only currency left in this wasteland of the Pitt.

Hell. This place has no hope. This place could use another atom bomb, and hope that this one finishes the job. But that is what a normal person would say. Perhaps I really am here to serve his will. Perhaps it is my will to bring order to the Pitt!

This place really does have potential. We simply need to get rid of the trogs. We need to get rid of the mutations that make people's skin peel, and turns them into beasts. We need to produce and survive, not succumb and consume! The mill works, and that's a start! Now, if we only got it running…

I walked towards the outer set of steel stairs of the tallest factory with the big chimneys to Haven. There lived a merchant-raider band, although this, of course, I did not know yet.

I walked determined to build a true place out of this, to build a base upon which my successors could build a great city.

I was determined to build a new foundation upon the deaths and the labor of countless of innocents. Instead of killing themselves and using their energies for destruction, I instead thought that it would be better to have them use that energy to build a new world, although I didn't have the slightest clue of how to do so. I had left but a small gun and some rags.

But as I approached a sign that read Haven, with a bunch of bodies hanging upside down, with steel hooks going through their bodies, and men lighting fires, feeding people to them as if they were firewood, I understood that the human condition only understands pain, and only pain changes man to adapt to necessary ways. This gave me an idea.


End file.
